On Tuesday New Jersey Education Commissioner David Hespe had the hapless task of appearing before the Senate Budget Committee to explain next year’s school aid budget. For some, the Christie Administration’s proposal for education of $12.7 billion, 38 percent of the state’s $33.8 billion total budget, is an ethical and legal violation of N.J.’s 2008 School Funding Reform Act, which is supposed to calculate annual state school aid.

This argument mirrors similar criticisms about N.J.'s pension system, long underfunded and under water. Both the pension and education funding formulas share one basic problem: they're both divorced from economic reality.